100 Words to Baker Street
by rabidsamfan
Summary: 100 word drabbles mostly, with possibly other fixed length ficlets someday as well. Disclaimer: I don't own Holmes, or Watson, but you know that!
1. After the Wedding

After the third time I looked up from the agony columns to point out an item of interest to your empty chair I reached for the hypodermic. It's not as if you were sitting there grumbling through your mustache at my wretched habit, though it must be confessed that the drug has lost some of its savor without your disapproval. But solace me it must, lest I spend the entire evening listening for the skitter of your pen across the pages of your diary. Solitude is not the haven it once was for me. 

I am lost without my Boswell.


	2. Death Notice Mary Watson

They were watching Mycroft of course, so messages of concern to no one but myself he sent disguised. Even ordinary messages passed through several sets of hands – in India I received packages from horse dealers and military men and once from the paws of a cheeky walnut-stained sahib youth who was begging bread for a genuine lama. Mycroft knew I would read every word on every scrap of wrapping paper, hungry for news of home. Some packages had to be forwarded more than once, coming weeks late into my hands.

Oh, Watson, I came as soon as ever I knew. 


	3. Nothing to Forgive

It was Mary noticed as she helped me prepare my manuscripts. "How came it," asked she, "that in seven years you never mentioned your brother to Holmes? Not even to say that he had died?"

I still have no answer, except that you are Sherlock Holmes. For all that you see and know and instantly comprehend there are chambers of the heart forever locked against you. Knowing you to be numb to grief I hid my grief from you, and will again, now that you are come back from death.

How could you have possibly known that I would mourn?


	4. What Cannot Be Mended

Fear and cocaine sustained me in that dreadful flight from Reichenbach Falls, but by Florence I had exhausted my supplies of both and had no sooner managed to send a line to Mycroft than I collapsed near the doorstep of the monastery of Certosa del Galluzzo. For weeks I lay out of my head with brain-fever, in the care of the monks, none of whom- thankfully- could understand my ravings. By the time I found my sanity I had been lost to you for so long that I thought it better to stay lost. 

The damage had already been done.


	5. Doubts

Watson's telegram reached me first, and I was getting into the cab to go to the boat train when the boy brought me yours. It burned a hole in my pocket as I stood vigil with Watson in Marienberg, waiting below the falls for your body to be found, knowing that it had been sent from ten miles away and hours later than your putative demise, and yet never certain that you yourself had dispatched it and not some messenger. I have it still.

Engelberg die Schweiz

Mycroft Holmes: Diogenes Club: London 

For the love of God guard W

S


	6. Unexpected Encounter

As I hobbled past the Adair house I caught a glimpse of a back I thought I knew and was drawn into the crowd as unwillingly as a trout on a line, nudging past the loiterers and louts and wishing I dared to use my full height to advantage.

It was he, of course, listening with a skeptical air to the unlikely theories of a Scotland Yard upstart. I should have gone on as soon as I was certain – not put my disguise at risk – but instead I stood within reach, numbering the sudden strands of silver in his hair.


	7. A Friend Indeed

"Where you like and when you like," he said when I asked him to come along with me, and I was glad, for I had some qualms over whether or not Moran would try to use Watson to lure me out of Baker Street. So long as we were together I could be sure _his_ life, at least, was safe.

But as the old shikhari got his hands around my throat I had better reason to be glad. Watson had him off me in one instant and pinned to the floor the next.

Now _my_ life is safe again too.


	8. All Things Must Perish

I have seen his fingers twitch across invisible strings as he listens to me, and deduced that his own instrument was another casualty of the Afghan campaign. When I offered him the use of mine he said nothing; but tonight I returned unexpectedly and found him deep in his own world, trying to force his weakened arm to support the violin and his unpracticed hand to find the chords in timely fashion as he bowed. Too soon the pain of his wound defeated him– that shoulder will never be strong– and I slipped away again unseen.

Some losses require solitude.


	9. Apology

It was not from any lack of confidence in your discretion that I kept silent, Doctor. My brother Sherlock has never been an enthusiastic correspondent, and I promise you that wandering the world on his own gave him no impetus to correct his indolent habit. Such news as he did send me was usually political, not personal. I once spent five months waiting to learn if he had avoided a nasty end in the Himalayan snows, only to be dunned with a beggarly telegram of four words from Egypt.

Why give you hope of his return when I had none?


	10. Agley

The moment I heard his blithe step on the stair, I suspected. When he carolled the news of the empty treasure box, I was certain. So much for my hopes that the revelation of a fortune would divert Miss Morstan from her clear interest in my unfortunate friend! And Watson, my Watson, who went to the Forrester's with the face of a man condemned, has surely met a doom he much prefers. By arranging for privacy, I have allowed them both to express their feelings quite unfettered by the presence of anyone who might object.

I shall never understand love.


	11. Legacy

For a moment the resemblance was astonishing, and then the boy grinned and fell into rambunctious conversation with his cousins, becoming only one of the many. If his hair was sandier or his eyes a lighter hazel it hardly mattered in that crowd. But I caught Mrs. Forrester's eye and she turned hastily away. It was only later that she admitted to the adoption – a substitute babe for her daughter's lost child, a substitute mother for a babe whose own had gone reluctant to the grave, and whose father could not keep him.

But they kept the name. John Sherlock.


	12. Ave at Vale

The will gave us right of residence for so long as we liked, and young Hudson would have been glad, I think, to keep such famous tenants, but arthritis had already driven me to a ground floor dwelling, and a recent case had shown us both quite clearly that we had neither of us so very long to wait before we'd follow our gallant landlady to her new lodgings. After the funeral we retired to our old sitting room and I sat silent, watching as Holmes gleaned memories from every worn patch of carpet and faded curtain.

"Bees," he said.


	13. Barometer

It has been twenty years since he served his country, but still he holds himself like the soldier he was then, and his head turns to the sound of drums, or bugles, as if listening for commands he no longer has to follow. Twenty years since Maiwand, and still he dreams of it at night, and calls to the men he could not save. And when the weather seeks to turn from summer heat to autumn rains his left arm tells me so, coming to rest awkwardly in the never forgotten outline of the sling which held it long ago.


	14. Heart of a Lion

Shattered nerves, he said he had, but the moment that Jefferson Hope kicked Gregson across the room the Doctor leaped into the fray, and I must say Lestrade and I were happy of the help, for our prisoner had no intention of being taken alive. He brought with him a towel to wind round the long legs, and with Gregson back again we were able to complete the job.

An ordinary man, still convalescent, would sensibly choose to stand clear while three strong men wrestle a fourth to the ground, but I begin to learn that Watson is not ordinary.


	15. An Irregular Year: 1892

It's Tom wot was 'Wiggins' when they was out 'unting for the boat Doctor Watson wrote about in his first book, me being only a tyke back then, but it's me wot's 'Wiggins' in the new one, seeing as Tom went and got apprenticed to a farrier when he turned twelve. Good money in 'orseshoes, and good luck too, 'e says, and ain't it past time I stopped standing foolish outside old lady 'udson's 'ouse and started in to looking for a job of me own?

But me I can't think of no job better than working for Mr. 'olmes.


	16. Limits

There's not an ounce of sham in Watson, which has complicated matters now and then. That matter with Culverton Smith comes to mind, or that excursion to Dartmoor, and neither of them the most egregious of my offenses against him. But I will do it again if I must. It is a matter of fooling Watson or failing to fool the world. I know he feels as if I do not trust him when I fail to take him into my confidence, but I would far rather rely on his honesty than his acting ability.

He can't play poker, either.


	17. Anstruther

You must understand that it was his wife who came to me when he was looking over the place next door and asked if I wouldn't mind taking on his patients now and then. I said yes, of course, and I can't say I've lost by the bargain for he's always let me collect any fees involved. Holmes' cases drew him away fair often those first three years, and now the man is dead they still do in their own way. He writes the stories up for Mary, and reads them to her when the pain won't let her sleep.


	18. On Dartmoor

He's a genius, Sherlock Holmes, and there's no denying it. Saved my career a time or two, despite his methods, which are enough to drive a man mad: plays his cards so close to the vest ain't no one can follow his reasoning, not even the folk he's called to help him out. But there's times even a genius can't see the nose in front of his face and that was one of them. Stepped right off the path and into the bog, he did, and all for a boot we could have got with a butterfly net next morning.


	19. Royal Command

When I saw Mrs. Godfrey Norton listed among those lost aboard the ill-fated ship _Naiad_, I sent a note of condolence to the King of Bohemia, knowing from bitter experience how difficult it was to find oneself in mourning for someone who would never have the comfort of a grave.

A week later he came to my surgery to ask why Holmes had wanted the picture of Irene Adler and in answer I let him read my diary. He did so, silently, and then passed the notebook back to me.

"Publish it," he ordered gruffly. "They should both be remembered."


	20. All An Act

I have learned many things from my observations -- how a blind man walks, and how sailor ties a knot -- performances I draw from my repertoire whenever I walk out in disguise. But some things I have learned require no makeup to employ. My brother Mycroft taught me to declaim with such authority that no one will gainsay me, and an undergroom of Lord Lillington's how to stop a runaway horse with no harm to the horse or myself. But when it comes to handling women -- ah, there the trick is simple indeed.

I just pretend my name is John Watson.


	21. Reading from Afar

Another copy of the Strand – another overly romantic story from Watson's hand to remind me of all that I miss so much about London. If it were only safe to write to him I'd offer a critique. God knows we had the argument often enough over the stories he wrote before my "death". And still he hides himself behind the mask of incredulous dullard, transforming conversations between us into tirades from an irascible tutor aimed at a perpetually incompetent student. _It fools our foes; they have to underestimate **one** of us,_ he'd tell me, if he could.

I certainly did.


	22. Addicted

He only really feels alive when he is taking chances. Risking his fortune is respectable, so he plays the horses, and plays billiards, and misses the days when he could still defy the odds over a surgical table. But a revolver requires little finesse and only one good arm. A chase through a moonlit night here, a desperate search for clues there, even a battle or two: propriety doesn't frown on foolish heroics, thank heaven. He outwaits the tedious hours of Holmes' drugged lassitude by imagining adventures, and knows his house is glass.

Holmes has cocaine, but Watson has Holmes.


	23. Souvenir of a Hiatus

At the last moment he hesitated, in spite of having warmed himself for months with the thought of Watson's astonishment. But there was neither sense nor logic in having hauled the battered tin box halfway 'round the world just to hide it away beneath the bed, or turn it over to the untender mercies of a pawnbroker.

For what would no doubt be the last time he ran a sensitive hand across the painted name, and wished that he had found the papers it had once held. There was nothing left inside but memories. Pray God they were good ones.


	24. A Delicate Operation

"Hold still, Watson."

"Ow!"

"Well, if you would just hold still!"

"You try it sometime, Holmes. Ah!"

"That one had gone rather deep, I'm afraid."

"How many more?"

"Dozens. Are you sure you don't want something for the pain?"

"They're just... ouch... thorns. I'll live."

"Technically, I believe, they're referred to as needles. Which come to think of it may be why the thought of another needle has no attractions for you."

"Holmes, if you don't stop laughing, so help me, I'll drag you back to that greenhouse and drop you on _your_ backside among the Colonel's prized cactus plants!"


	25. Conundrum

Mycroft never knew how many times Sherlock had begun letters to Watson during those three years, nor how many timetables had been consulted for the fastest route back to London. He suspected, of course, but that was hardly the same thing as certainty. Then again Sherlock would never know how many times Mycroft had taken the role of cabman again, to find a way to keep a curious eye on the one man his feckless brother had ever called a friend.

A friend indeed, Mycroft realized, while he watched Watson mourn, and wished that he had one of his own.


	26. Catastrophic Illness

The boots caught it first and then the maid, which proved how convenient it was to have a valetudinarian physician for a tenant, confined to the house though he was by wind-blown snow. A tenant who confined his chemical experiments to concoctions found in Squire's _Companion to the British Pharmacopoeia _for the duration of the foul weather was useful too, although he was next to succumb to cough and fever. The coal cellar was full, the larder well-stocked. They muddled along quite adequately until the landlady took to her bed.

The Army does not teach its surgeons to make coffee.


	27. Bonfire Night

October gave way to November, and Watson reverted to his chair by the fire, finally glad that the Army had refused him that summer. I was glad too, for the rain which solved my latest case, and thought it appropriate that we celebrate. But after the first rattle of firecrackers outside drained all the blood from my fellow lodger's face I made haste to pour a little more brandy into his glass. "Guy Fawkes," I said, and he blinked away the haze of another vision.

"I remember," he said, and it was not only the gunpowder plot that he meant.


	28. Interlude

The pain had been an old friend, as familiar as the lullabies of my childhood. It proved my existence, kept me struggling against my abductors. The morphine put an end to that, denying me any touchstone to reality as neatly as it denied me all hope of escaping from under the attic floorboards. I drifted in my wooden coffin, only vaguely aware of police whistles and the crack of gunfire.

"Watson?"

I heard my name, distantly. Had I been in possession of my body, I might have tried to answer, but as it was I could do nothing but wait.


	29. Perchance

With Moran safely in the cells at Scotland Yard, a blanket pinned over the broken window, and Mrs. Hudson's fine celebratory dinner inside us we talked till all hours, but at last the wine and the aftermath of all the day's excitement left us both drowsy. I considered going back to my own home – I would have to face my surgery hours soon enough – but the couch was closer, and once I had shooed Holmes off to bed I let my eyes close, hoping for a night of uninterrupted sleep.

It was not my nightmare, but his, that woke us.


	30. Change of Plans

He sent a telegram back to Baker Street because his new fellow lodger had had enough shocks for one evening and didn't need any additional worries. He went to the Diogenes to beg a week on the couch from his brother because there wasn't any place else he could afford, and because Mycroft wouldn't need to ask questions. And he memorized his bruises in the mirror once he'd washed away the disguise, because he had egregiously miscalculated a battle veteran's vigilance when he'd decided to practice his pickpocketing technique and it wasn't a mistake he was going to make twice.


	31. Another Set of Vices

It hadn't taken long to lose all the money he'd won on Silver Blaze, and most of Holmes's cases were not so obliging as to provide a similar opportunity. Not that the cases Holmes had got of late were the kind to set a bored convalescent's pulse to pounding. But he did win now and then. And at least he wasn't shooting up the wallpaper.

Nevertheless he knew it was his own fault that Mrs. Hudson raised the rent _this_ time. Even though he'd doffed his lampshade to her when she'd caught him singing an inebriated ballad to the hatstand.


	32. Observation

He is my companion and partner again, and we run the chase together when we can. But there are days he cannot run with me; days he must give over entire to pain. At the equinoxes, when the change of seasons torment old scars with storms and wind. At the end of July, when the echoes of war torment his soul with memories and grief. There are other anniversaries as well. I do not need to consult the records to know upon which day his Mary died, nor for that matter the day he was orphaned so very long ago.


	33. July 30, 1881 part one

At three in the morning of my eighth night of miserable ennui my fellow lodger reeled into our sitting room reeking of cheap perfume and cheaper whiskey, escorted by our incensed landlady with her candle. Two days and no word, a good chicken dinner gone to waste, or it would have if she hadn't had a neighbor who'd properly appreciate it, and then for him to come home in this condition! He accepted her berating like an errant schoolboy, but I thought it best to shoo her back to bed before she worked her way from his faults to mine.

* * *


	34. July 30, 1881, part two

His collar was gone, his chin was neglected. In the few months we had shared lodgings I had never known him to appear so disreputable.

"Where _have_ you been?" I asked, and Watson shrugged.

"I dunno," he mumbled, sagging abruptly into one of the chairs by the table and resting his head on his folded arms. "You tell me."

"You are hardly in any condition to absorb a lecture on observation and deduction," I told him wryly.

But he only turned his head, to look at me with empty eyes. "No, I mean it," he said softly. "I really don't know."


	35. Reading of the Will

The solicitor droned on, enumerating far too few assets and all too many debts. The older boy balanced the figures in his head against 800 years of history, ruthlessly sacrificing whatever was necessary to fund a life in London, nearer his work. His brother, he knew, was studying the solicitor's shoes, deciding which outbuildings the man had visited as he made his inventory. Neither of them were cut out to be gentleman farmers, no matter how many generations had come before them. He could eke out another year at University for Sherlock, if he tried. To hell with the land.

* * *

inspired by a picture by spacefall


	36. Valentine's Day Reprieve

The desperate need for physicians that winter had drawn me back into medical practice, while Holmes grappled with the weight of a secret problem his brother had dropped into his lap. By the end of January we were both of us well on our way to being automatons, sharing spare moments at dawn or dusk over hasty meals. Meals I ate, while he, I'm afraid, resorted to strong tobacco and the violin. But then an advertisement for an Wagner opera appeared, and I was quick to secure tickets.

To see Holmes smile again I was willing to endure anything, even Ragnarok.


	37. Curry Tonight

_"Smells are surer than sounds or sights to make your heartstrings crack.  
they start those awful voices o' nights that whisper, Old man, come back."_ -- Kipling, _Lichtenberg_  
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* * *

Already the delicate spices drift up to our rooms from the warmth of the kitchen below, and I wonder which it shall be tonight, the soldier or the invalid, who partakes of supper with me. He has been only somewhat tired of late, which makes the odds uncertain. On better days his back straightens, his eyes brighten, and I am regaled with anecdotes of the other side of the world; on worse I find myself filling the air with trivialities, discoursing on details of medieval manuscripts or fishmongers' trousers -- anything to keep the dull sheen of remembered pain at bay.


	38. Travel Broadens the Mind

He cannot remember being unable to read, not in English or French at any rate, although Mycroft assures him that there was a time in his infancy when 'devouring a book' was a matter of gums and the occasional tooth rather than an intellectual exercise. Arabic, Greek, and Cyrillic characters slowed him only briefly – his ear for phonemes is exceptionally fine, and alphabetical systems are logical, even when the languages they represent are not so clear. As he ventures deeper into the East, however, he is encountering books which refuse to be read.

Tibetan is going to be a problem.


	39. Haggard

Colonel Moran was in a cell, raving. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were at Baker Street, celebrating. And George Lestrade was sitting in his matchbox office at Scotland Yard, drinking.

His report lay, unfinished, before him: "Mr. Sherlock Holmes came back from the dead" staring out of the page like a proclamation. Like a miracle. No doubt his superiors would ask him to provide proof of so outrageous an allegation, but he'd needed none – had flown to obey Holmes's instructions like a falcon stooping to a well-loved glove.

And perhaps, if he finished the bottle, he could stop remembering why.


	40. Chink in the Armor

The problem with Sherlock Holmes, Moriarty knew, was that none of the usual levers applied. He had no family, barring a brother whose relative proximity engendered contact so sporadic that the loss would scarcely be noted. His landlady was well-paid, the servants were urchins Holmes had plucked from the street, more likely to report any attempt to suborn them than to succumb. If it weren't for clients, toadying policemen, and his former fellow lodger the man would have no visitors at all – although Dr. Watson was the instigator of their meetings, not Holmes. But _Watson_ had a wife.

Moriarty smiled.


	41. Twice Bitten

The first time John was off with Holmes. Mary went through the agony of losing all their hopes with only the slavey beside her. He came home to blood and tears and cleaned up both, reassuring her that it was not her fault, that any doctor understood that pregnancy was not a guarantee, and that he loved her still.

The second time he was there, and eased her pain, though not the grief which even morphine could not dull, or the wild certainty that a younger wife would have given him a living son.

They didn't try a third time.


	42. Moran Considers Watson

He has the bearing of a soldier, or would, were it not for the left shoulder which no tailor can disguise as being even with the right. Shot in the back whilst running with the rest at Maiwand, my Army connections inform me, and yet he hasn't the heart of a coward. One of the roughs I sent to test his mettle ended up in hospital, and the other has yet to be released from jail. I begin to see what Holmes values in the man.

And I should have shot him while he was grieving by the Reichenbach Falls.


	43. In Practice

Author: rabidsamfan  
Title: In Practice  
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes may be out of copyright, but he still isn't mine, alas!  
Author note: A response to the first of the Watson's Woes July 2011 writing prompts: _Watson injury (any severity), from a different POV than Holmes (meaning Mrs. Hudson, Scotland Yard, Baker Street Irregular, The Villain (whoever he/she may be), etc._

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* * *

I was taking the night shift at Barts, supervising, when a Lacerated Lower Leg came in, sopping wet and reeking of oil and Thames-water, accompanied by flotilla of Street Arabs. They hovered anxiously and chirped unwanted questions as I coached my students through the process of disinfecting the wounds and placing the sutures so as to minimize the damage. I didn't even look at the patient's face until he caught one of the boys and sent him off to tell "Holmes" that he was in good hands.

I looked then all right, and found him smiling back. "Hello, Stamford."

"Watson?"


	44. Hospital Ship: April 17th, 1917

Author: rabidsamfan  
Title: April 17, 1917  
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes may be out of copyright, but he still isn't mine, alas!  
Author note: A response to another of the Watson's Woes July 2011 writing prompts, this time a WWI era poem about hospital ships. The Lanfranc, btw, was real.

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* * *

A command of the channel and a strong glass comprised more temptation than Sherlock Holmes could resist, particularly when combined with rather more information about the movement of hospital ships than had been yet made available to the general public. He spotted _HMHS Lanfranc_ by her bright green and red lights when she was a mere speck upon the horizon and scanted his supper, preferring to spend his time watching the ship lumber slowly towards home. He wondered if Watson were looking back, binoculars trained upon the villa on the shoulder of the downs.

Then came nightfall, and the explosion.


	45. Hospital Ship: April 18th, 1917

Author: rabidsamfan  
Title: April 18, 1917  
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes may be out of copyright, but he still isn't mine, alas!  
Author note: A response to another of the Watson's Woes July 2011 writing prompts, this one was for epistolary fic, and I made it a sequel to the other.

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M ADVISES FIFTY CASUALTIES FROM SINKING OF HMHS LANFRANC STOP REPLY IF NOT AMONG THEM STOP SH

NOT AMONG THE FIFTY STOP AM BRUISED AND SODDEN AND HAVE LOST ENTIRE KIT STOP JHW

AGAIN QUERY SH

AGAIN STOP PLEASE ADVISE MY TAILOR STOP JHW

CAN YOU GET LEAVE AND WILL ARMY PAY FOR NEW UNIFORMS QUERY SH

KAISER WILL PAY STOP WON FIFTY POUNDS IN GOLD MARKS OFF GERMAN OFFICER BEFORE SHIP SANK STOP WILL HAVE LEAVE STARTING SUNDAY STOP JHW

SURPRISED YOU DIDNT SINK TOO STOP WILL BRING CAR TO PORTSMOUTH SUNDAY STOP SH

SEE YOU THEN STOP JHW


	46. Coping Method

Author: rabidsamfan  
Title: Coping Method  
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes may be out of copyright, but he still isn't mine, alas!  
Author note: A response to another of the Watson's Woes July 2011 writing prompts: _Stress/exhaustion or stress management_

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* * *

Watson writes.

He records things when he's contented, the paper filling up with inconsequentialities, all the small, ordinary minutiae of life in a neat efficient hand.

But that isn't writing.

Writing is what he does when he cannot sleep, when adrenalin and exhaustion and other even less salubrious emotions are fizzing through his veins, making the pen skitter and the words dance. Writing takes memories and spins them into tales, grand tangles of ink on sweat-stained paper, piling up until the candle gutters and dies and there is nothing left to do but lie awake, waiting for the unforgiving dawn.


	47. Of Politicians and Cormorants

Author: rabidsamfan  
Title: Of Politicians and Cormorants  
Disclaimer: Sherlock Holmes may be out of copyright, but he still isn't mine, alas!  
Author note: A response to another of the Watson's Woes July 2011 writing prompts: _If actions speak louder than words, how is the pen mightier than the sword? _Draws on the beginning of _The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger_ which was published in 1927,

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* * *

"Another break-in attempt, Holmes. That's the third one this month."

"Yes, and I'm afraid you're going to have to do something about it, Watson."

"At last! Just let me find my cane and I'll be off to London. That scoundrel deserves a proper thrashing!"

"That scoundrel is barely thirty-two, and you, my dear fellow, have passed your seventieth birthday. I suggest that you add a preface to the story you have on your desk, warning him off."

"Actions speak louder than words, Holmes."

"But the pen is a much more precise weapon than the sword. Especially when it is yours."


End file.
